Monday 9th February 1942

We enjoyed to the full, those comforts of Sarafend which, we reckoned, we were so soon to lose. I luxuriously had a tooth drilled and filled for the first time. We all ate lots of sticky pastry with whipped cream in the Camp cafe, and sat snugly around the fire in the barrack hut at nights, or else walked down into Rishon to dance, get drunk and fight. (For some reason – perhaps because I was so busy with French – I never got into Rishon at all.) Even the once steady old boys such as Bob Andrews, sometimes came back tight from Rishon, during the last week of our time at Sarafend.

Well, we moved tonight, just before sunset, in some degree of comfort. We carried our kits about a hundred yards to the lorries and were dismounted at Lydda station – without any panic – quite near the train. It was a goods train of the now familiar kind, with sliding doors; 20 men to a truck. The trucks were much cleaner than the ones on the Xmas train, and had asbestos floors and wooden-lined walls. We were fairly comfortable and could stretch our legs, full length, from time to time.

We were all asleep when the train started, with a terrific jolting, about seven hours after we had entrained.